DON GONYEA, HOST:
The World Cup is heading into its final stretch. In war-torn Gaza, thousands of people have found a way to watch the tournament in the past weeks, and they've been rooting for one team in particular, Egypt. Last Tuesday, Egypt faced the champion of the last World Cup, Argentina. But even amid that night's excitement for that match, tragedy was close at hand. NPR's Anas Baba reports.
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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) Masr.
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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting) Masr.
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ANAS BABA, BYLINE: When Egypt won a place in the top 16 team teams in the World Cup, Egyptian coach Hossam Hassan celebrated by raising the Palestinian flag. People in Gaza were already deeply supportive of Egypt's team, and they saw themselves in that moment on the world's biggest sporting stage.
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AHMED HIJAZI: I cried. And honestly, I cried when I saw it. It's make me, like, mixed feeling that our voices are being heard.
BABA: That's Ahmed Hijazi, who was watching the game from the streets of Gaza City. For many Palestinians, Egypt is not only a neighbor and a cultural icon but had long been the only crossing out of Gaza for those able to travel.
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BABA: The next match Egypt played drew even bigger crowd across Gaza. Nearly every neighborhood in Gaza found a way to watch Egypt take on Argentina. Thousands of people gathered between tents and shattered buildings to hold public screenings in front of a projector screens. Other people climbed the remain of a 14-story apartment building destroyed in an Israeli airstrikes, turning broken concrete into stadium seats.
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BABA: The driving force behind one of the biggest public screenings of the game was Mohammed al-Wahidi, a retired school principal who spent three decades in classrooms before joining the Egyptian Relief Committee in Gaza, established by Egypt's presidents to coordinate aid operations, from food distribution to rubble clearing. His family says retirement never suited al-Wahidi. The 64-year-old enjoyed serving people. He was a respected community leader.
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FAWAZ AL-WAHIDI: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: His son, Fawaz al-Wahidi, says the family would plead with him to slow down but says he worked tirelessly to get aid to people during a famine last year. He says his father would consistently reply, I am helping people.
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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Chanting in Arabic).
BABA: As a member of the Egyptian Relief Committee, al-Wahidi helped bring screenings of Egypt World Cup matches to Gaza, where there is no electricity or high-speed internet, so that people here could join the millions around the world watching the games. But during the first half of Tuesday night's match, an Israeli airstrike struck the car al-Wahidi was in.
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AL-WAHIDI: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: Al-Wahidi and the driver were killed. And the World Cup, a time of celebration for al-Wahidi, became a time of anguish for Fawaz, his son. Gaza's health ministry says two young brothers nearby, 8 and 10 years old, were also killed in the attack. Israel's military say it targeted the Hamas militant, without naming the individual.
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UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Speaking Arabic).
BABA: At his funeral, al-Wahidi's coffin was draped in Palestinian and Egyptian flags, the same flags that only hours earlier had filled Gaza's streets during a fleeting moment of collective joy.
Anas Baba, NPR News, Gaza. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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